The Scottish poet Robert Burns described his native land as a 'Land o' Cakes' and as with all cookery in our family we like to make variations on a theme. So as we just about every day make some form of oatcake or oat based blini for our breakfast, I've been experimenting with making a twice-cooked oat griddle cake, which serves as a sweet biscuit that we can eat anytime. Chocolate chip griddle cookies are now a firm favourite in our house but I wanted to make something that was more festive. A Short History of Oat Griddle Cakes Like the ancient Mongolians, who used their shields to cook t ..read more

Strictly speaking à la florentine is a method of preparing eggs or fish on a bed of spinach cooked in butter and with a covering of Mornay sauce. However, as I don't like spinach and am not that keen on flour-based sauces, this is an alternative version. As an aside, I also love growing Ipomoea or morning glories of which the edible version is the sweet potato and in North Western France I have better chance of a good crop of leaves, than tubers. I also have a garden full of chickens, so egg recipes are no problem! For each person/guest (this makes a great party dish) you will need: 1 ver ..read more

When you make one of these decorative loaves you are taking a deep dive into Celtic History, crossing over into the traditions of a Church's Harvest Home and rising up to the present day of Country Wedding Breakfasts and Farmhouse Kitchen Interiors. The word Lammas comes from the Old English hlaf maesse, meaning loaf mass or loaf feast, it took place on the first day of August, traditionally when the wheat harvest started. Farmers' wives would make bread from the first corn (wheat) cut and bring it into the Church to be blessed and thereafter used in the mass.  This festival was adapte ..read more

Our garden is a haven for hedgehogs, in particular because it is a forest with plenty of natural hedgehog food and also some opportunities for a giant hedgehog treat in the form of a new-laid egg, which our hens obligingly leave in nests under bushes and flowering plants. However, I can't deny them a few of these delicacies, as on a warm Spring evening the garden is filled with the snuffling cries and crunchy chewing noises of hedgehogs eating their way through the snail population, themselves out on a hunt for our lettuce and strawberries. So, inspired by these lovely creatures, I decided ..read more

à la bourguignonne is a French cooking term which can refer to a garnish, a sauce or way of braising meat, poultry, eels, snails and a whole host of other delicacies. Perhaps its most famous manifestation, however, being Boeuf à la bourguignonne; cuts of beef cooked slowly in a home-made stock and red Burgundy wine. The term literally means 'in the fashion of Burgundy', which Larousse Gastronomique, describes as: '...the region of France where the best food is to be had and it enjoys the esteem of gastronomes for the quality and variety of its wines.' There are probably well over 50,000,0 ..read more

The North West of Normandy, where we live, is famous for its apples and its dairy farming. With the milk it makes its World famous raw milk cheeses, such as Camembert, Pont l’Evêque and Liverot and with its many varieties of apples it produces; tarts, sweets, cider, pommeau (apéritif) and calvados (spirit). As we can buy organic cider for $1 equivalent a bottle it seems crazy to use the apples from our trees to make it, so we save them for eating raw, making cakes and pies and also for fermenting apple cider vinegar. Method One uses organic farm cider and Method Two uses organically grown app ..read more

Coffee is our first drink of the day and we've spent quite some time trying to find one we really like. Recently and thanks to my brother-in-law, who is also a big coffee devotee, we found a new one, in bean form. So, I thought I'd put it to the test with an idea I dreamed up as an alternative to the famous gâteau version; a cherry mocha-chocolate sundae which comprises: Coffee ice cream Coffee with dark chocolate ripple and chocolate chip ice cream Coffee and dark chocolate sauce Coffee and cocoa truffles ....and Cherries A Dip Into Coffee History The picture of the sundae left, is ta ..read more

Shortbreads were traditionally baked for Hogmanay. They were among the traditional cakes doled out in some parts of Scotland on the last day of the year to local children, which by them not surprisingly was known as 'Cake Day' and for which they had traditional rhymes such as the very obvious and straight to the heart of the matter: 'Our feet are cauld, our shoes are thin.  Gies our cakes an let us rin!'   Several of my Great Aunts used to breed Scotties and Cairn Terriers and big old family Christmases always meant, shortbread, crackling fires and fetching in holly to the tune ..read more

Before we came to live in France we had a house purchase fall through in the UK, in Cornwall, an old house on a hill overlooking the sea. In a strange twist of fate we ended up across the channel in an old French house and if you climb up one of the trees in the garden, you can still see almost the same bit of sea.  So although we love living here, every now and again when we have a pang of remorse for what could have been and want to wallow in nostalgia, we make a Cornish Pasty for our supper.   What is a Pasty and How Does it Differ From a Pie Mining started in Devon and ..read more

My filling for this mazagran is one we eat regularly as a vegetable dish particularly at this time of year. It is rich and satisfying and redolent of sunny Autumn days and misty mornings. à la flamande   Traditionally a garnish made from braised green cabbage and eaten with pork and sausages, which is how we devour it, we also love Flemish style cabbage made with the red variety.  As with the tomato fondue I made for my à la provençale mazagran, you can never have enough of this dish so if you have some left over it can be heated up perfectly for another day. The trick with ma ..read more